RUSSIAN PLANE BLACK BOXES POINT TO "ATTACK"

       Black box data from the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt last week indicate it was bombed, sources said, ahead of a first update Saturday from the Egyptian-led probe into the disaster.
Both the flight data and voice recorders failed 24 minutes after the plane took off from Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh resort en route to Saint Petersburg on October 31, when it plummeted from the sky into the Sinai Peninsula killing all 224 people on board.
Cairo and Moscow initially dismissed a claim Islamic State (IS) jihadists downed the plane, but mounting evidence that the Airbus A321 was attacked has prompted a growing list of governments to warn against travel to Sharm el-Sheikh.
On Friday, President Vladimir Putin ordered all Russian flights to Egypt halted, in a fresh blow to the country's already struggling tourism industry.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told news agencies the measure did not mean Moscow believed the crash -- the worst aviation disaster in Russia's history -- was due to an attack, and the investigation continued.
The head of Russia's emergencies ministry said Russian experts had taken samples from the crashed jet and were testing it for any traces of explosives.
But a source close to the investigation told AFP the black box data "strongly favours" the theory a bomb on board brought down the plane.
Another person close to the case in Paris said the plane had suffered "a violent, sudden" end, saying: "Everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and suddenly there was nothing."
Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal and the head of the Egyptian-led investigation into the disaster are to hold a news conference at 1500 GMT on Saturday, the ministry confirmed.